Middleboro's Norman L. Diegoli too busy to retire

Diegoli is an expert on Route 6 and says it was once the longest transcontinental highway in the country, running east to west from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

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By Alice C. ElwellEnterprise correspondent

Wicked Local

By Alice C. ElwellEnterprise correspondent

Posted Apr. 22, 2014 at 2:02 AM
Updated Apr 22, 2014 at 2:07 AM

By Alice C. ElwellEnterprise correspondent

Posted Apr. 22, 2014 at 2:02 AM
Updated Apr 22, 2014 at 2:07 AM

» Social News

MIDDLEBORO

This year marks Norman L. Diegoli’s 46th year on the Middleboro Zoning Board of Appeals.

At 89 Diegoli tallied 3 million miles on his driving record and proudly shares his Feb. 6 birthday and political party with the late Ronald Regan. He was born in 1925 in Clinton, Mass.

Over time he’s given up skiing, fishing and tennis. He even gave up owning a dog, and not because of his age, but because the town adopted a leash law.

He retired from the state Highway Department, went on to work fulltime for Bartlett Consolidated in Plymouth. If you ask him why he still works, the man of a few words will simply say, “I’d be bored if I didn’t.”

Diegoli hasn’t give up his seat on the zoning board, his lifetime hobby of building model planes, he still reads voraciously and packs a .38 police special or a 9 mm Glock.

“I’m a pretty good shot.” he said.

He does take off Friday mornings to pay bills but otherwise works 37 hours a week and is still a member of several organizations including the Republican town committee, American Legion, Elks, Masons, Mitchell Memorial and Wankinquoah Rod and Gun Club.

Locals like Robert M. Desrosiers will tell you the best time to catch up with Diegoli is 7:30 weekday mornings at the local coffee shop.

Back when Desrosiers was just getting started in the engineering field, he would tap into Diegoli’s wealth of knowledge and turn to him with questions.

“If he didn’t know the answer, he knew someone that did. He knew everyone,” Desrosiers said.

Diegoli wasn’t always a fixture in Middleboro. He came to town in 1949 after working a stint in the Army retrofitting civilian vehicles for military use at the Pentagon. After being discharged Diegoli took an engineering position with the Massachusetts Highway Department to build the Mid-Cape Highway, connecting Provincetown to the Cape Cod Canal by Route 6.

Today, Diegoli is an expert on Route 6 and says it was once the longest transcontinental highway in the country, running east to west from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

That changed in 1964, Diegoli said, when the state of California truncated Route 6 to make room for the Los Angeles Freeway and ended it in Bishop rather than Long Beach.

He was delighted to learn there’s a move afoot by the U.S. Route 6 Tourist Association to restore the coast-to-coast integrity of Route 6 to its original 3,652 miles.

Donald Doucette, executive director of the Massachusetts division plans to tap into Diegoli’s store of knowledge to nail down the original alignment of Route 6 on Cape Cod.

Page 2 of 2 - Middleboro has changed a lot since Diegoli made it his home, in 1949 the downtown was buzzing with activity and the mills were running.

“The biggest change I’ve seen is the deterioration of the downtown,” Diegoli said, listing stores that once lined the busy street: shoe stores, hardware stores, clothing stores and even a Sears & Roebucks.

“When I came down this way, Route 44 came down through the center.”

But the mills have closed, Route 44 bypasses the downtown and it’s been dying a slow death ever since.

“It hurt the downtown to loose a major thoroughfare,” he said.

Diegoli doesn’t have any answers to spur a revitalization of the town’s center, but voted in favor of reusing the vacant hospital in the downtown as a drug rehab center.

“High Point was the last hope for the hospital. I don’t think anything there was anything else. It’s going to be occupied now. If High Point didn’t take it over there’s a distinct possibility it would have been torn down.”

Bruce G. Atwood, chairman of the zoning board said Diegoli doesn’t talk just to hear himself.

There isn’t a state agency that keeps records of the length of service in municipalities, so it’s unclear if Diegoli is the longest standing member of a zoning board. But Diegoli can say he’s served on Middleboro’s Zoning Board of Appeals longer than anyone else, ever.